


Destined

by InNeedOfInspiration



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 11:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18827674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InNeedOfInspiration/pseuds/InNeedOfInspiration
Summary: Fic prompt based on GoT 8x03, on the line Bran tells Theon: “Everything you did brought you where you are now. Where you belong. Home.”





	Destined

Steve Rogers did not believe in fate.

For him, it was a joker card which whenever some unforeseen, unpleasant event happened was thrown on the table by the numb mind that had run out of rational explanations and could not comprehend the logic of the circumstances but could not move on without having labeled it first.

Boyfriend suddenly breaks up before running away with another girl — fate.

Death — fate.

His mother had told him often, probably to soothe her frail little boy’s heavy heart: “You are destined to accomplish great things, Steven.” But he never believed it. All he had to do was look in a mirror to be reminded of the harsh truth.

Fate was something that did not belong with him.

It was a word he had never used for himself. Not even when he had crossed the path of the scientist who would make him the very first Super Soldier. Not even after the said experiment was surprisingly successful.

Then he heard it again, from Peggy’s mouth. Peggy Carter, the boldest officer he had ever met; Peggy Carter who had had to fight her way to make her own future.

“You are exactly where you are supposed to be,” she told him under a starry sky, the night before his first mission in Europe.

He looked at her without saying a word. He wished he could believe her — especially her — but somehow her words did not sound quite true, although there was a nice ring to it.

With time, and after many successful missions, he almost began to believe he had found his place in the world. That maybe he was exactly where he was meant to be.

But reality hit him harshly. All his faint hopes plunged into North Atlantic along with him.

He woke up in a new, unknown, scary world. A world he had fewer chances to fit in than the one he was born in.

Those remote illusions of destiny died in the new millennium, and he stashed them for good six feet under the day Peggy was buried.

She had faith in him — so much that he had once started to believe it. But beliefs were only good to turn to ashes.

And yet his life took a darker turn as he found himself become a fugitive, an outlaw, a pariah. He fled across countries like a coward.

Natasha, who was once a teammate, became a lighthouse gleaming in the distance. A bearing to look out for on hazy days. And sleepless nights.

He couldn’t remember what day it was the first time their kindred solitude merged, but he remembered it was on a stormy evening.

After that, aloneness became unbearable, and their reunion over the pillow, the only soothing balm for it. Without realizing, his profound feeling of loneliness, like the tide, fell in small waves over the New Moons.

In her arms, he forgot to strive for a sense of purpose; the relentless voice inside his voice quieted down. It was the closest thing to peace.

His fingers gently traced the lines of her curves as he watched her sleep. Natasha woke up and a smirk came to her lips.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.

She snuggled herself against him, closing the cool gap between their bodies — both of them yearned for warmth.

She softly pressed her lips on the crook of his neck, just below the line of his thick beard.

“What’s keeping you awake?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Old memories,” he answered dismissively.

“I’m familiar with those,” she commented groggily.

“Do you…— I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had done things differently.”

Her giggle rang out in the room. “No wonder you barely sleep, Rogers. As much as we want to have control over our lives, sometimes it takes to step back to realize we don’t always have a hand on the wheel. You could not have changed a thing.”

“I didn’t know you, of all people, believed in a higher force.”

She propped herself up on her elbow and leaned above him. Her emerald eyes glistened in the moonlight. He pulled his arm from under the sheet to cup her face.

“I believe we’re too small in this world to hold complete control. I’ve had more lives in one than I can count, but one of them led me to Clint, and long story short, I’m in your arms tonight.”  

“It’s quite a shortcut, indeed.” He remarked.

She rolled her eyes and lightly slapped his bare torso.

“Keep on fighting it as long as you want, Steve Rogers. But everything you did brought you where you are now. Where you belong. Home.”

He looked up at her and smiled softly. The sound of a banging door behind the thin wall broke the silence.

“Well, if home is a 2.3-star motel in South Virginia,” she added with a snort.

“2.1 after Sam’s rating actually,” he chimed in.

“Oh, shut up.”

They both chuckled before rolling under the sheet.

But life became crueler as it often does when you try to keep afloat. And the one thing he cared about was torn away from him. Clint returned, but she didn’t. Natasha didn’t.

He felt himself dissolve. This universe in which she no longer existed turned insipid, bitter. He wanted to spit it out.  

“As long as we have the Stones, Cap. We can bring her back,” Thor was shouting in a remote distance.

He carried the Asgardian’s words with him as he stepped on the platform and traveled back to the past. He started with Vormir, with a suitcase filled the most powerful weapons in the Universe, for the greatest fight of his life.  

And when Natasha eventually appeared in flesh and blood in the low sea before him, his soul reignited, shining brighter than he could remember it ever did, feeling fulfilled.

The void inside him, the one he had carried for as long as he could remember until it became part of him, filled up completely. Irreversibly.

He ran up to her and held her close and safe in his arms. When he finally allowed their bodies to part, he looked into her eyes.

“God, you were right,” he cried with unadulterated certainty, holding her face between his two hands. “Everything I ever did in my life was to bring me to this moment.”

He, Steve Rogers, had become Captain America, crashed into an ocean, crossed decades, become worthy of wielding Mjolnir, traveled to the past because he was destined to bring the woman he loved back from the dead.

He hugged her tightly and smiled, as he thought of his mother. Right there and then, he was holding his greatest achievement.


End file.
